Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-05-28

ground. Look out for these men who
move around the hotels with sleek hats
always sleek hats-and p~atronizing
air, and understandable interest about
Jour welfare and entertainment. You
are a fool if you cannot see through it.
THEY WANT YOUR MONEY.
In Chestnut street, PHILADELPHIA,
while was living in that city, an in
cident occurred which was familiar to
us there. In Chestnut street a young
man went into a gambling saloon, lost
all his property, then blew his brains
out, and before the blood was washed
from the floor by the maid the com
rades were shuflllng cards again. You
see there is more mercy in the high
wayman for the belated traveller on
whose body heaps the stones, there is
more mercy in the frost for the flower
that it kills, there is more mercy in
the hurricane that shivers the steamer
on the Long Island coast, than there is
mercy in the heart of a gambler for his
victim.
In the third watch of the night, also,
drunkenness does its worst. The
drinking will be respectable at eight
o'clock in the evening, a little flushed
at nine, talkative and g%arrulous at ten,
at eleven blasphemous, at twelve the
hat falls off. at one the man falls to the
floor asking for more drink. Strewn
through the
DRINKING SALOONS
OF the city, fathers, brothers, husbands,
sons as good as you are by nature,
perhaps better.
In the high circles of society it is
hushed up. A merchant prince, if he
gets noisy and uncomfortable, is taken
by his fellow jewellers who try to get
him to bed, or take him home, where
he falls fiat in the entry. Do not wake
up the children. They have had dis
grace enough. Do not let them know
it. HUSH it up. But sometimes it
cannot be hushed up, when the rum
touches the brain and the man becomes
thoroughly frenzied. Such a one
came home, having been absent for
some time. and during his absence his
wife had died, and she lay in the next
room prepared for the obsequies, and
he went in and dragged her by the
locks. and shook her out of her shroud
and pitched her out of the window.
Oh! when rum touches the brain you
cannot hush it up. My friends, you
see all around about you the need of
something radical to be done. You
do not see the worst. In the
MEETINGS
at London a great multitude have been
saved. We want a few hundred Chris
tian men and women to come down
from the highest circles of society to
toll amid these wandering and des-
titute ones, and kindle up a light in the
dark alley, even the gladness of
heaven.
Do not 60 wrapped in your fine furs
and from your well-tlled tables with the
idea that pious talk is gong to stop
the gnawing of an empty stomach or
to warm stockingless feet. Take bread,
take raiment, take medicine as well AS
take prayer. There is a great deal of
common sense in what the poor wo-
man said to the city missionary when
he was telling her how shes ought to
love God and serve Him. .'Oh!" she
said, ''if you were as poor and cold as
| am, and as hungry, you could think
of nothing else"
A great deal of what is called Chris
tian work goes for nothing for the SIM
pie reason it is not practical; as after
the battle of Antietam a man got out
of an ambulance with a bag of tracts,
and George Stuart, one ofthe best Chris
tian men in this country said to him:
What are you distributing tracts for
nowp There are three thousand men
bleeding to death. Bind up their
wounds, and then distribute the
tracts"
We want more common-sense in
Christian work, taking the bread of
this life in one hand, and the bread of
the
NEXT LIFE
in the other hand. No such inapt work
as that done by the Christian mar who,
uuIluS tue last WdT, went lntO ~ nOSpl-
tai with tracts, and coming to the bed
of a nan whose legs had been ampu-
tated, gave hin a tract on the sin of
dancing! l rejoice before God that
never are sympathetic words uttered,
never a prayer offered, never a Chris
tian almsglving INDUCED in but it is
blessed.
There is a place in Switzerland,
have been told, where the utterance of
one word will bring back a score of
echoes; and | have to tell you this
morning that a sympathetic word.
kind word. a generous word. a helpful
word uttered in the dark places of
town will bring back ten thousan.
echoes frem all the thrones of heaven
Are there in this assemblage this
morning those who know by expert
ence the tragedies in the third watch of
the night ] am not here to thrust
you back with one hard word. Take
the bandage from your bruised soul,
and put on it the soothing salve of
CHRIsT's GOSPEL
and Of God's compassion. Many have
como coo others coming tn God this